Linda Green Enjoys Nice Sesions Of Arobics and Writing Books about her LOVE life,
I was born in North London in 1970 and brought up in Hertfordshire. I wrote my first novella, the Time Machine, aged eight, shortly after which I declared that my ambition was to have a novel published (I could have been easy on myself and just said ‘to write a novel’ but no, I had to consign myself to years of torture and rejections). I was frequently asked to copy out my stories for the classroom wall (probably because my handwriting was so awful no one could read my first draft), and received lots of encouragement from my teachers Mr Roberts, Mrs Chandler (who added yet more pressure by writing in my autograph book when I left primary school that she looked forward to reading my first published novel!) and Mr Bird.
My first publication came when I was thirteen and my Ode to Gary Mabbutt won second prize in the Tottenham Weekly Herald ‘My Favourite Player’ competition. At fifteen I won the Junior Spurs Football Reporter of the Year Competition and got to report on a first division football match from the press box at White Hart Lane (I got lots of funny looks and none of the journalists spoke to me.)
At sixteen I embarked on ‘A’ levels and a journalism course at De Havilland College, Hertfordshire, and my college magazine interview about football hooliganism with local MP and football club chairman David Evans made a double page spread in Shoot! magazine (they never paid me) and back page headlines in several national newspapers (only a nice man at the Daily Star bothered to check the story with me).
I joined my local newspaper, the Enfield Gazette, as a trainee reporter at eighteen. During a ten year career in regional journalism I worked as a reporter on the Birmingham Daily News, news editor on the Birmingham Metro News and Chief Feature Writer on the Coventry Evening Telegraph, winning Highly Commended in the Feature Writer of the Year category of the 1997 Press Gazette Regional Press Awards.
I loved working on regional newspapers but by 1998 my features were getting too long and the urge to write a novel had become too great so I left my staff job to write my first novel and work as a freelance journalist. I have written for The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Times Educational Supplement, The Big Issue, Wanderlust and Community Care Magazine. I’ve also had a short story published in Best magazine
I found the writing and working from home a very solitary process so also worked as co-ordinator of the Birmingham Bureau of Children’s Express, a national charity which runs a learning through journalism programme for young people and taught journalism to schoolchildren for the National Academy of Writing. After I moved north in 2001 I qualified as an adult education tutor and taught creative writing classes to students aged between 18 and 82 for the Workers Educational Association across Calderdale, West Yorkshire.
After more than a hundred rejections from agents for my first novel (and more rewrites than I care to remember) I finally got an agent but still couldn’t get a publisher. I started work on my second novel I DID A BAD THING in 2003, finished the first draft and gave birth to my son Rohan in 2004, rewrote the novel and got a new agent in 2005, obtained a two-book deal with Headline Review in 2006 and here I am.
I live in Todmorden, West Yorkshire (which is great despite being one of the wettest places in England), am married to Ian Hodgson, a sports photographer for the Daily Mail, and have a two-year-old son, Rohan, whose favourite book is currently Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go To Bed.
I enjoy travelling (though I haven’t been anywhere more exotic than CenterParcs since I had Rohan) and have trekked after wild orang-utans in Borneo, been to the edge of the Arctic Circle to see polar bears and as far south as Tierra del Fuego to photograph penguins (yes, I know it would have been easier and cheaper to go to Chester zoo!). I also sponsor a brother and sister Karma Kunchok and Tsewang Dhargyal who I met while visiting a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal.
And here are a few of my favourite things:
Novel: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Authors: Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby.
Music: Blondie, The Police, U2, Alanis Morissette, Counting Crows and Beth Orton.
Films: The Shawshank Redemption, Dead Poets’ Society, Truly, Madly, Deeply.
TV: The Royle Family, Ally McBeal, Have I Got News for You, Newsnight.
Food: Red peppers, mangos, roasted cashew nuts, pesto sauce, Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate, strawberries, houmous and cherry tomatoes (not all eaten at the same time!).
Places in the world: Pokhara, Nepal; Tanjung Puting National Park, Borneo; Churchill, Canada; Homer, Alaska, The Lake District, England.
And a few of my least favourite things. If I was on Room 101 my selections would be: Women in unsuitable footwear (eg: white stilettos for muddy canal towpaths), tights (the 15-denier American tan variety), Thomas the Tank Engine stories (those engines are so mean and miserable), candyfloss (I don’t do pink and sweet) and the notice on pay and display machines which says ‘overpayments accepted’ (big of them!).
